Poker, the movie

Anyone who thinks the rich are running a huge conspiracy to defraud the rest of us should read Megan McArdle and quickly realise that they must be doing it by accident, because this is one of their bright lights talking:

It seems to me that this sort of acts like borrowers shouldn't have any obligation to repay money on an asset that has fallen in value--as if there were some sort of moral right to take highly leveraged bets on housing and pass off any losses to someone else.

McArdle is, it may shock you to learn, talking about homeowners, not the banks.

McArdle is one of those sad creatures: a libertarian. Libertarianism is basically richism: it's a "philosophy" invented to justify being wealthy. Its pillars are the rights to property and freedom. Just reading that, you know it's bullshit. Rights to freedom and property are of course inimical to each other. One of the main constraints on our freely enjoying this world is that some fucker already owns all of it.

But that's the essence of libertarianism. Someone owns everything and they want to be free to stop you from sharing it. Libertarians expound a philosophy in which each is entitled to possession of their body and the fruits of its labour, which would not be completely objectionable if it were actually feasible that that should be all we possessed. But it isn't. We possess property, advantages, privileges, access to education, social networks, lots of stuff that makes the playing field so far from level as to resemble a mountain.

Of course you don't think anyone should take what's yours when you're on top of the mountain. But when you're in the foothills, you may feel that actually, level ground would be better for all. I understand the right's argument that if we don't allow there to be the prospect of mountains, people won't work hard, but the fundamental flaw in the rightist worldview is, of course, that those at the peak actually did work harder than you or I to get there. We are all perfectly aware that the hardest working among us are, rather, those in the deepest valleys. We do not reward hard work. We mostly reward privilege, cunning and willingness to consider others negligible.

Libertarians' main gripe is that they have to pay taxes. Now I'd agree with you that taxation is out of hand. States take far too big a take of the national wealth and waste a ton of it. But I'd rather have a bloated, ineffective state than none, while we have mountains and valleys. (I'd rather have no state, but the conditions in which that is possible are not achievable currently. A problem political philosophies that trade in ideals or utopia suffer is that you cannot get there from here without going through somewhere else. Those that have tried have generally caused a great deal of suffering on the journey.)

No poor person could be a libertarian. Tell the poor that the only rights they have are to be free and to own stuff, and they will laugh in your face. They don't own anything and if you're free to exploit them 24/7 they never will. They need the right to be protected from the rich. And let's be clear: no one is free if the alternative to working for the rich is starvation. This is, all in all, the reason libertarianism will never have very wide appeal. Sure, there are some American working class adherents, but the American white poor seem to be much more aware of the possibility of the dice's falling so that they suddenly become enriched (through a lottery or a win on a game show or being discovered as a star or whatever) than they are of the probability of its happening, which is of course vanishingly small. I think that they have become convinced that because the number of "celebrities" increases all the time, it will eventually grow to encompass everyone. In any case, they are convinced that everyone can be rich, which is not true.

Indeed, the impossibility of everyone's being rich is going to be one of the bigger problems of the coming century. It just isn't possible for the emerging world to be as rich as we are if they want a planet they can live on. And we'll continue to try to prevent any but a few of them from becoming rich.

Where will it end? If I ruled the world, we'd find a compromise, in which none stood at the peak and none in the troughs, but all were able to live in gently rolling countryside. But I don't, so it will probably end in a lot of gunfire.

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Making bank

Here's what gets me. We gave billions to the banks and they spent it on jets and redecorating their offices (okay, they also spent it on buying more risky assets and giving themselves bonuses because they have greater responsibilities with the increase in asset base). But still they don't lend money to business and still they are lumbered with the toxic assets. And the talk is all about how we can take the bad assets from them and save the banking industry.

Well, here's my plan: fuck the banking industry. It's possible and the only real downside is that shareholders in banks, who have enjoyed the upside, will now have to swallow the downside.

This is what we do. Instead of capitalising RBS or Lloyds, we capitalise new state banks. They are not permitted to deal in securities except within strict restrictions, so they cannot accumulate "bad" assets. They lend to business and benefit from an implicit guarantee from the sovereign, so they are safe for other financial institutions. Depositors (you and me) will flock to them, abandoning the bad banks, because we do not want our money to be held at brokearse establishments.

If banks such as RBS are bust, let them go bust. If they are sound, they can compete with our state banks. We are not then lumbered with the bill for the wild fucking party the City, and other financial sectors, have had for the past ten years.

***

The rest of it is fairly easy: massive stimulus -- and I mean massive -- preferably spent on infrastructure that does not have huge ongoing maintenance costs (roads are good; aircon in schools not so good). It doesn't matter that this is "make-work". We want to make work. By the time the work is done, the economy should have picked up and there will be jobs for those we made work for. It's not a tough theory to get your nut round.

I know that this doesn't fix the broader problems of our world. But it's not the case that we can just allow what we have to collapse and then a new, better order will spontaneously come into being. No. Let it fall apart and we'll all be eating mud and hoping there will be an earthworm in each mouthful. It's not fair that we have to pay for what the rich pigs made, but it's what it is. It would be a lot less palatable to have it all fall to ruin, because believe it, the rich have enough resources to ride out chaos, but you just don't.

Is it that bad? Could we be on the brink of a new dark ages? Yes, I think it is. I don't think most people get the scale of how bad things are because they have never been educated in how the world actually works. God forbid. The elites would long have found themselves up against a world if people understood how they are fucked over. Most of human history has consisted of small elites' shitting themselves that the poor will figure out that they could just take the wealth if they wanted to, and trying to lessen the poor's access to knowledge of why that is and how they could do it.

But really, ruin? Well, think. How far are you from busto? I'm a couple of grand from it. If my boss went out of business tomorrow and Mrs Zen was laid off, we'd be fucked. I'd be about a month from needing a sawnoff.

The economy is the same. As long as people stay in jobs, keeping the money spinning round, we're okay. The money circulates, the government takes a nibble at points in the cycle so, among other things, it can provide some consuming ability for even the unemployed, and there are goods in the shops for us to buy. Cut enough of the jobs and the money doesn't flow as quickly, the government has less money, of course, and supporting the unemployed becomes a huge burden. Less money in our pockets means less we can spend at businesses; they have less to pay workers with, so sack more. Some go bust. Those left borrow less, invest less, hire fewer, sack more. So at each point less money spins round. Etc, and finally the money is moving so slowly, the whole thing falls apart. We realise that the currency of money creates a sort of centrifugal force that keeps the world in the shape it is. It falls apart and we realise then that we cannot get what we need.

You're going to need tinned goods at that point, and sooner or later, some of your neighbours will realise that if they want stuff, they will now have to take it. Well, at least we won't have boring Saturday nights in any more.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

I wish there was a way to let Mr Mohamed know that this may have been done in my name, but it was not done with my consent.

This is not us. This is not the ordinary English people. I refuse to believe that this is what we stand for. It is not what I stand for. Of course I am afraid that some lunatic will one day bomb a train that I am on, or kill people I love.

But we have built a world, at least somewhat, that is not based on fearing our neighbours, but on trying to understand and appreciate them.

This is not us. If I could tell Mr Mohamed anything, I'd tell him, this is not us, and I hope now we can demonstrate that it is not.

The difference between "that" and "which" eludes most of us until we get it, and once we get it, we cannot confuse them.

"That" phrases are used to answer the question "which x?". In other words, "that" phrases distinguish things that belong to the same class of things (in my example, the class is "dogs"). "Which" phrases are used to give more information or detail about things that have already been distinguished.

"That" phrases are always essential to the sense of the sentence, so they must not be separated by commas. By essential, I mean that if they were omitted, we would not know who or what the subject of the sentence was, and would need to ask "which...?"

Try it.

"The dog that is in a car barks." Take out the "that" phrase. "The dog barks." Which dog? There are three.

"Which" phrases are never essential in the same way. "This dog, which has brown fur, barked because it was disturbed." can lose its "which phrase", and we still know which dog, because it is specified by "this". Once we have defined which dog we are discussing, we can add information.

Formally, "that" phrases are usually called "defining clauses" and "which" phrases "non-defining" (you may see the terms "restrictive" and "non-restrictive", because the "that" phrase restricts the reference of the noun it modifies). The words tell the story truly: defining clauses select one thing from a class of things that are described with the same noun; non-defining clauses do not (they simply give more information about a noun that has already been defined or restricted). Indeed, they are not all that similar. If I were trying to learn the difference, I would focus on learning what defining clauses do, and then asking whether that is what the thing I want to write does.

The confusion of the two arose because formerly people used "which" for both sometimes, distinguishing them by using a comma.

The comma is key, of course, but we have strengthened the distinction by no longer using "which" to define.

Further confusion can arise because "which" is used to ask for a noun class to be restricted by the listener: "Which dog?" and as a demonstrater in constructions such as "I know which dog you are talking about." Note that "that" and "which" are both described as "pronouns": "which" is clearly one, and you can see that it transparently substitutes for the noun that it is giving more information about; "that" is less clearly one, and I won't go into a technical explanation of why it is.

For practical purposes, although you need to be aware that people use "which" as a defining pronoun, you should use "that" to define and "which" to provide further information. You need only remember that "which" is preceded by a comma, always, and "that" is not. Whenever you know that you do not want to write a comma, use "that". Whenever you feel that you are adding extra information, and consequently have the overwhelming to parenthesise, use "which".

Friday, February 20, 2009

As for that...

Is pedantry pointless? Well, obviously I don't think so, given that I make a living from being at least something of a pedant (although not as much as you might think; some editors spend their lives banging their heads against the wall of usage, but not me).

One of my least favourite usages is "as" for "because". (I'm not fond of "since" either, but don't get me started.) The least of my complaints about that usage is that it is rarely euphonious, but that's a minor consideration. Much more important is that it often creates ambiguity.

Look at this:

"As I saw him, I shouted his name."

This sentence means either "at the same time as seeing him, I was shouting his name" or "seeing him caused me to shout his name". These are very different meanings and the sentence is hopelessly ambiguous.

The ambiguity is rarely that clear, but it often exists nonetheless, particularly if you begin a sentence with "As". Some do this because their idiot teachers told them not to begin sentences with "because".

There is nothing wrong with "because". It's not "special" in some way, so that you can't use it to begin a sentence, and any objection to beginning one with it would equally apply to "as". The reason people were told this is that, in formal English, while "Because it was raining, I took an umbrella" is a sentence, "Because it was raining" is not, even if you are answering the question "Why did you take an umbrella?" But so long as you write a complete sentence, it's fine to begin with "because".

One of the authors I'm currently working with has a serious case of the "As" disease. He begins many of his sentences with "As" (which I correct on every occasion to "Because", prompting him to ask me to change every instance back, which makes me smile because there's nothing like a man and his pet usage).

However, I have to explain to him that doing so creates an expectation in the reader, which renders this sentence ambiguous:

"As the war in Europe approached its end, the situation became ever more favourable to the advancement of Japan's imperial ambitions."

If you consistently use "As" to mean "Because", the reader is led to understand this sentence to mean that the situation became ever more favourable to the advancement of Japan's imperial ambitions becausethe war in Europe approached its end. That may be true, but what he actually means is that it became more favourable pari passu with the ending of the war. Using "As" for "Because" destroys this usage, and would necessitate rewriting this sentence to remove the ambiguity. If he used "because" consistently, he would not face this problem.

I like careful demarcation of words, where possible, because doing so retains distinctiions of meaning that are useful. Diminishing the toolbox has never struck me as wise for people who wish to communicate. So I always correct "as" when it means "because" and most writers don't notice or care. But I care, so I am not keen on changing it back. Note, above all, that if you never use "as" to mean "because", the reader has no expectation that you intend that usage, and even a sentence such as "As I saw him, I shouted his name" is functionally unambiguous.

1car1.com: robbing bastards or model business? You decide

So another month passes and I hear nothing from 1car1.com, who you mayrecall, took 500 quid from me because my sister slightly grazed the back bumper of a car I hired from them.

Clearly, they just want me to forget about it. I'm in Australia, so what can I do? They have the money up front, so what can I do?

All I can do is whine about it on my blog, and email them fruitlessly, becoming more and more furious that our economic system encouraged people to be this indecent. A business model that subsidises cheap upfront prices by scamming people when they damage cars is disgusting, and pretending that is not what you are doing is laughable, when it so clearly is.

All you can do, to lessen the frustration, is to call these cunts out, which I do:

Hi

It's now another month and not a sign of any invoice.

You told me the work had been done and you were just awaiting an invoice. A month ago. I am pretty sure you are going to screw me out of every cent of my 500 quid, but I'd like to know for sure, because my poor sister is really worried about paying me back and I'd like to get it sorted with her.

It looks a lot like you simply hope I'll stop bothering you, and you can keep the whole 500 quid. I've checked you thieves out on the web, and that seems to be your MO. So okay, big mistake to hire a car from you, but can you please just get the robbery over with? How hard is it to invent damage that might conceivably have cost 500 quid (given that the very minor damage we actually did would not cost anything like that to fix)?

And, just on the off chance that it actually bothers you that I think you're a bunch of robbing bastards, could you suggest to me why I wouldn't think that about people who take 500 quid from me, never bother contacting me and have no intention of giving it back, as far as I can see?

It resolves nothing, and I (or my sister J, actually, because she insists on paying it) am out 500 quid no matter what, but the "little people" have to get whatever small satisfaction they can in this world.

Grind

It's like, if you stepped outside, it wouldn't be there. And sometimes I watch a football match and it's live and I say to myself, they're really doing that now, and I just don't believe it.

wat

Anyway, the noise stops and I'm aware of birds. And here's a thing, when I read that diversity is a good thing, I never read about why. The organisation benefits from diversity, I see them assert, but they never say why they benefit.

These birds are diverse but they only bring discomfort because I do not understand their language, and in my home, they speak to me in tongues I grasp.

And anyway, is it a bad thing that languages die? It's not bad that they change, right? So what is lost? Just stuff.

I'm talking to L, and she's saying how people aren't happy. And she was watching something on TV, and the people were dirt poor, but they were happy. And I'm saying, yeah, the thing is, I think we were happiest before the Neolithic Revolution. Yeah, we got sick and didn't live as long as we do now. But we didn't fight over things. We didn't fight over land, because no one had land. We didn't have stuff, only what we could carry.

And our lives never got better for having more stuff. That's just a myth the rich sell you because they want to be richer. And that's something I never fucking understood. I understand that money is freedom. I understand that I am encumbered because I am poor. But at a certain point, I would be free, and after that, what point would there be to having more?

I could even tell you how much it would be.

And if I abandoned stuff, it would be even less.

wat

You are not permitted to abandon stuff, you fool. Yeahbut.

See, I woke up this morning and I didn't want to live. And I have been here for five hours plus and will be here for seven more. What's the use of that? What's the point of it?

And you know, I always thought I was fairly smart but how smart can you be when you have the wrong stuff? Right now, all I want is a small cottage with a walled garden, and how hard would that have been? Not hard at all. And how hard is it to eat a bit of shit and rise? Not hard at all. I was thinking, I could have written shit for the college rag, but I didn't, and I can't even remember why not. Just lack of faith.

wat

You have faith in everyone else, you clown. And you keep saying you needed a mentor and now you have one. You just don't ever let him show you the way.

Right. But you know, I start a lot of things and never finish. That was half the problem. More than half. I start a lot of things and lose interest, or lose faith, or lose the ability to love them enough to

You know, that's a curious way to look at itthat you should love what you doThat's a curious way to even think about such mundane things as becoming who you are and who you can be.And it doesn't make sense to think you couldn't love something now you're older, because what has changed except that you stopped dreaming.

How many times do you need to say I wish I had never given that up before you realise you didn't ever give it up, you just put it aside and can pick it back up just as easily?

Here's the fucking thing. Why worry about authenticity when everything you do is fakery anyhow? Do I think I made a principled way to being a copy editor? Do I think I built the world I live in? Do I think I am doing the right thing?

Stop. Think.

Think.

Give her what she wants. It won't matter if it's six months more. It won't matter because the kids will still be primary age, and you will still have something left. Let it slide so that you can make it good. Let it slide so that you can breathe.

Think.

It's no use fretting about how you told those people October. They don't care about you; they won't look after you. Don't fret about those people; think about how you can make yourself a bud, waiting to flower; think about how you can make yourself a cool glass of water.

When I was shaving the other day, I was thinking, I could die in ten years. I meant, I expect to die. I feel like I will die. I am not in good shape and I'm only half sure that the pains in my chest are nothing.

I could die and I don't want to have been this man, and you can easily stop. You can't deny any of that.

You cannot deny any of that and trying to just ignore it

is like ignoring the grinding, and what the fuck is that guy grinding anyway?

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

The school run

There are chickens ranging free at the school. Close the gate.There is no chicken to be seen, two Indian ladies are talking in pleasant voices in the carpark, and one is fat. Few are fat in India, only the wealthy, and the wealthy are less in evidence there than you imagine.

Here the rich are thin. The world is upside down and round about. There are chickens ranging free in the streets of towns I have seen. Close the gate.

I am remembering Kumbia, I slept in a street and goats ate my toes first thing in the AM, and what would I think of a black man sleeping on the front when we were kids?

We never stop to consider. But I consider. Sometimes I feel

The ladies I do not know whether they are speaking in English or in tongues; I do not know whether they are speaking in some Indian language or in something I could understand if I only

why do I continue to believe that other people know things I don't, that they feel what I can't? Didn't we establish that I am not marooned, just ordinary, and all it is is that they are speaking in Kannada?

Did we not establish that when you put me straight

I am only kidding, because you never did, you never told me anything good about myself, even though you say, you are so good in so many ways, you cannot name even one way and I'm sick of that.

I wonder why there are no chickens in the yard, and how it looks to have plants, it reminds me of the school farm at Penpol. If you let your mind wanderClose the gate.

But no, really, it seems it was always spring. I do not remember days inside with rain on the roof. I do not remember anything but the warm gentle winds. I do not remember anything but loving it.

I see J as she ducks round a corner. I imagine she saw me and disappeared as quickly as she could, but I know that it is not how it is. Monkey! You're an auditor, adding up the insults that are not offered and making ledgers in which I am owed something by this world. I'd love to see her tits, they're so big that you cannot help thinking about them, but I never will. Even if, she is friendly with Mrs Z, and it would not be worth it because I only want to see them once and I will be satisfied.

The smaller I become, the less I want. By the time I die, I will be free of desire.

Monkey, you will be without a home when I am drawing my last breath and what will your pennypinching have achieved?

Even if I spoke Kannada

When I turn right out of the gateway, I keep thinking that I will not see the car oncoming. A couple of times cars came out of my blind spot and I know I'm too distracted to be good at this. A couple of times cars appeared from nowhere and I was ready to understand that nothing solid is solid. A couple of times I would have been dead before I even thought about dying and what would this be for?

I know I have a use though and I haven't stopped believing in being useful. But I fear the monkey is telling me lies, speaking in Kannada so that I am always thinking there is something I should be doing but it's just out of reach of comprehension.

I will never learn to speak that language. Have you ever

(It's not a punchline. There won't be one for this joke.)

Have you ever felt sad that the yard you scratch for corn in is so small?

On the way home I see a couple walking in the middle of the road, and I'm thinking, omg, you want the world to know you exercise in the AM. And you are realising, slowly, that there are so many reasons for things that you never knew the reasons for them, never realised that the ends they pursue are varied enough for you not to be able to know them all, and have you ever felt

that the world is bigger than the yard you scratch for corn in, but someone closed the gate, and you were not, even then, in the yard at all?

Monday, February 16, 2009

Picking up Zenella

There's a rag in the road. You think it's a child's toy. You get closer. It's a bundle of rags. There's a rag in the road and you think that if a car ran over it, it might skid.

The sun is almost down, we all have our lights on. The sun is sunk in the sky and we all are finding our way home or away. Wherever we just were, we are not there, and wherever we will be, we won't stay.

The mall smells of Australia. Can't explain, you had to be there. And if you were there, wow, we'd be laughing about it now.

But you weren't.

The trees were bright and full of colour when I went through the lane. And a smell of burning and I was thinking, if it came up the road, that's how you get trapped. If it came up the road, there'd be nowhere to go. But you'd drive across the open fields till you found another road. If there is another road, but of course there is, this country is crisscross with roads.

And there are, what are they, herons or something, something like grebes, something like long-necked birds with long legs, sitting in the floodway. I roar through like vengeance.

There are birds with long legs flying into the blue sky as I roar through like the juggernaut. I think, what if I hit one, I'd regret it. I don't have any glee at the thought of a bird derailing me today. I am confusing my car with airplanes or the bird with a roo.

I think I see a roo, just the flash of grey, at the side of the road, under a tree, in the branches of a tree that reach down to the road, just for a moment, just a flash of grey, just for the brief moment.

Did you ever see a ghost? Just at the edge of vision, something moving, and you're sure it's there, not just

Wait, wait, we are waiting, waiting by the door in the night with the light spilling out, washing over the dark night, washing it away, all the light spilling over us, and I have something sweet and lonely in my ears, a brittle melody, a song of love

and there she is. I see her and I know what love is. I know that this will end, one day on some hot road, out in a floodway, I'll hit a bird, my car cartwheels and I'm gone forever, but until that day

Picking up Zenella

There's a rag in the road. You think it's a child's toy. You get closer. It's a bundle of rags. There's a rag in the road and you think that if a car ran over it, it might skid.

The sun is almost down, we all have our lights on. The sun is sunk in the sky and we all are finding our way home or away. Wherever we just were, we are not there, and wherever we will be, we won't stay.

The mall smells of Australia. Can't explain, you had to be there. And if you were there, wow, we'd be laughing about it now.

But you weren't.

The trees were bright and full of colour when I went through the lane. And a smell of burning and I was thinking, if it came up the road, that's how you get trapped. If it came up the road, there'd be nowhere to go. But you'd drive across the open fields till you found another road. If there is another road, but of course there is, this country is crisscross with roads.

And there are, what are they, herons or something, something like grebes, something like long-necked birds with long legs, sitting in the floodway. I roar through like vengeance.

There are birds with long legs flying into the blue sky as I roar through like the juggernaut. I think, what if I hit one, I'd regret it. I don't have any glee at the thought of a bird derailing me today. I am confusing my car with airplanes or the bird with a roo.

I think I see a roo, just the flash of grey, at the side of the road, under a tree, in the branches of a tree that reach down to the road, just for a moment, just a flash of grey, just for the brief moment.

Did you ever see a ghost? Just at the edge of vision, something moving, and you're sure it's there, not just

Wait, wait, we are waiting, waiting by the door in the night with the light spilling out, washing over the dark night, washing it away, all the light spilling over us, and I have something sweet and lonely in my ears, a brittle melody, a song of love

and there she is. I see her and I know what love is. I know that this will end, one day on some hot road, out in a floodway, I'll hit a bird, my car cartwheels and I'm gone forever, but until that day

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Yes, I love you

Here is something that is totally fucking good. Yes, it does sound like Morrissey fronting My Bloody Valentine. That is a Good Thing. I officially declare this the best band in the world this week. Try disagreeing. I'm not moderating the comments for nothing, you know.

Friday, February 13, 2009

I mean wow. You couldn't get a more fundamental statement of what the Repugnants are about. Here we are on the verge of a depression that will make the 1930s look like a picnic in the park and they want to "stimulate" the economy by massively transferring what little wealth is left to the already wealthy, and fucking the poor hard.

What astonishes me is that these arseclowns actually get votes from the people they are completely upfront in fucking.

If you are a cracker in Alabama, you fucking explain to me how killing the estate tax on estates under $5 million helps you. You'll never have $5 million, even if you save really fucking hard for this lifetime and maybe 20 more on top.

They know what I know. They're not all idiots. Most can grasp that our economies are truly in the shitter and cutting taxes won't change that. They know too that the best way to pay for stimulus is to Tax. The. Rich. But that ain't happening. Americans worship the rich. They still will when the cunts have dragged all of us into oblivion.

Here's the thing, and I think even the dumbarse greedheads at the WSJ get this: Reagan, and Bush too, talked about reaching across the aisle, not assuming they had a mandate to do what they want, consultation etc, and then just rammed through whatever of their agenda they could, with a lockstep party behind everything they did.

Obama's problem with doing the same is not that he insists on actually meaning it, but that he doesn't have the unquestioning backing of his party. He's aware as any of us that there isn't going to be any "bipartisanship" and that appointing Republicans to his cabinet is just window dressing (and at that, Judd turned out to be more honest than Republicans usually are, and admitted that he would be too tempted to sabotage Obama's agenda -- I think Obama chose him wisely: a vain, puffed-up tard who would not end up taking the role; I think Obama's "bipartisanship" consists of making it look like he's trying to include the Repugnicunts, while being well aware that they won't play nice).

Hayward is half right though in this:

This is a lesson in the character of the two parties. The Democratic Party has been, at least since the Nixon years, a predominantly congressional party, finely honing the means of running the iron triangle of interest groups, bureaucracy and spending. This is why Presidents Carter and Clinton came to grief with their own party in Congress, and why the more executive-minded Republican Party generally presents better examples of presidential leadership.

Republicans are authoritarians. They line up behind teh Leader. Democrats are, well, democrats.

The Republican Party doesn't present better examples of presidential leadership; it presents better examples of followers.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Valentine's

We meet in the dark when we meet. And I think it's so you will not have to look at me, and you think it's so I will not have to look at you.

But I hate to touch you more than to look at you, and I would never tell you that.

We meet in the dark when we meet, plunging into a night of shame, but no one feels ashamed. So much in this world bears a label without being what it is labelled. So much in this world is like this: not so much not what it seems but more what you think it should not be. Which is the same thing.

We meet in the light of the lamps in the street, burning sodium bright, and how the fuck do people in this street ever sleep? Draw the curtains, I am saying, because if they're not sleeping, they are making notes.

Everything has to be history. Nothing can be left unsaid. We are unable to let the passing moment simply pass. I feel your hand on my face and I wonder how I would describe it if I was made to describe it.

Do you want me to suck your cock?

I wish you wouldn't ask. I wish that we could have a world without words, where we just are what we are and do what we do, and none of us has to make account. Dogs do that, don't they? Dogs do that, just live and none of them feels the need to write postcards from where they are.

Everything has to be history. I know that I cannot enjoy this moment because I will have to describe how it felt to me to you. I know that you will make me cringe with embarrassment by asking how it felt to me. I know that and it siphons the small joy of the small physical thing that it is. I know that I will have to find words that do not say what I mean.

I wonder whether there is a harder task for the aware soul, and I know that I take on one even harder: finding ways to avoid it without feeling diminished by lying.

Nothing can be left unsaid. I cannot just be here and be gone. I must tell you how it was. I am thinking about what I will say and I cannot focus on what you are doing. It is happening, but it seems to be happening to someone else, to the person I must report on.

The real thing is that your teeth are on my cock and I feel the skin stretch a little. The real thing is that you are kneeling on the scuffed carpet of this room, my cock rolling in the wet void of your mouth, and I feel the skin stretch a little and I am a little scared that you will bite, and more scared that I will like it and want it more, that it will outstrip the common sensation to the point that just being sucked does nothing for me.

I wonder whether I should encourage you. How would it feel to say, bite it? Is that something I could say? I wonder whether my voice will work. It feels as though my throat is dry enough that it will not, and I remember that I have water on the table near the window, just within reach.

I check that you are not looking and pick up the bottle. Did you feel me move? I hope that you will not look up, because I will have to smile. I will have to show that I am enjoying it.

But what would enjoying it even be like? How do you look when you are? I suppose I will have to smile. But can't people tell when you are faking a smile? Don't they know straight away? What would it matter? You care that I seem to enjoy it, not that I do.

I realise that I have gone soft in your mouth. What's wrong, you are saying. Nothing, I am saying, I'm sorry.

You have moved to the bed, pulling off your trousers and blouse as you move. I drink some water from the bottle in my hand and then bring it over to you. I am sitting by your side. I can feel your skin against mine, your belly against my hip. It is hot and soft.

I suddenly feel that I have a task that I have to perform, another of the many things that I have to do to make the days pass. Such is love, I am thinking, when you strip away the hearts and flowers, such is everything you ever do, hollow and unreal.

I feel a cold draught from the window and move over to shut it out.

Come on lover, you are saying. I close the window and we are alone in a room with the world outside, and there is nothing to do but begin to fuck you.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

How are you?

I am depressed and riven by envy of people who seem to know nothing about poker but are able to play professionallyhow couldn't I be good enough if they are?I hate my job but I have no alternative. And I mean hate it enough that I try to find ways not to bother doing itMy boss is a cuntstupid and arrogant in about equal measurewhich makes her difficult to deal withI am barely able to hold my marriage together long enough to get myself and my kids homeand her lack of commitment to going means I have to do it on my ownwhich is toughI have a broken finger, which is occasionally painfulMy back hurts a lot, for some reason my bed has stopped being supportiveI have a headacheI hate everything and everyone and I'm unable to stopI also have a coldIt's excruciatingly hot and oppressively humidThe children are badly behaved at night and I find myself in the role of discipliner, which I don't relishOtherwise I'm good

Friday, February 06, 2009

Rightards to the fore

Well here's what the Israel/Palestine crisis needs! A fascist gets to be kingmaker. Yes, you read it right. Fascist. That's what these fuckheads are. Let's not make the mistake of thinking their views are somehow acceptable just because their relatives suffered in the last world war.

Talking of extreme right fuckheads, nothing gladdens the heart more than Murdoch losing money. Sadly, he remains unlikely to follow Conrad Black to the slammer, but we can at least hope he'll go busto.

***

If you're struggling to understand the whole stimulus thing, let me boil it down for you.

It would be a good stimulus to make a list of the 100 million Americans most likely to go on a spending spree if they were handed a bunch of money, and then give them a bunch of money. 5K would be good if they promised to spend it quickly, but I'm not going to quibble if you give them 10 big ones.

It would be a bad stimulus to give the wealthy tax cuts so that they could sequester more of the money that they snort out of the economy and turn it into "investments" that benefit no one but themselves, often in foreign funds and companies.

It would be a good stimulus to build things that are all set to go, just waiting for money.

It would be a bad stimulus to make states sack teachers because they don't have enough money to pay them.

Just how fucking hard is this to get: America needs to get about three trillion dollars into its economy and it needs to do it now. If you just handed it out of the back of trucks, that would be fine. If you don't understand that, you don't understand any of it.

Thursday, February 05, 2009

On information

So I was thinking about what I could write about, because I still want to be a novelist, and I believe I have the skills, but what I lack is a story that is engaging enough for me to be confident that others will want to read it. That doesn't mean that I don't have stories that you will want to read. We are talking about a deeper degree of confidence. I'm pretty sure I'd be harder to convince than you are. I don't want to be second best. (I fear that that may have its end in my never writing anything, simply because I conclude that second best is all I'm capable of. And while I'm aware that second best would be pretty good, it's not good enough for me. Without a clear outside incentive -- such as, for instance, making a living -- I've never seen much point in pursuing anything just to be mediocre at it. Which probably explains why I don't pursue anything at all these days, not music, not art, nothing, even though some of the things I could just be no good at I enjoyed doing for their own sake.)

And it struck me -- I realise this is a roundabout way of getting to the point, but it's how I got to it -- that wealth is acquired by those who have an advantage in information, and that has been true throughout history. How did I get there from musing on what I could write? Well, it's simple, really: I realised that because I have a fairly dull life, I feel like I have no information advantage over most readers. What else is a story but something I know and you don't? If I feel that what I know and you don't isn't worth telling, then obviously I don't feel advantaged enough to profit from it.

I came to this conclusion when thinking about the Huns and the other horseborne invaders of Dark Ages Europe. Keegan, in his History of Warfare, is musing on how the Mongols managed to conquer where other similar groups of horsemen did not. He doesn't really come to a conclusion, and I don't know the answer to that question, but thinking about it led me to the realisation that the horse archers of northeast Asia were advantaged in many ways over the settled peoples they pillaged, but above all by their information advantage. What did they know that the settled peoples didn't? Several things. They knew that valour is worthless. They knew that mobility defeats power in warfare. They had a huge advantage in skill (and this should not be undervalued in warfare: the British "thin red line" did not win against the odds just because it had rifles but because it had an enormous tactical advantage over its enemies -- curiously, it succeeded for many of the same reasons as the horse archers: those who specialise in attacking at long range can basically mince those who specialise in war at close order, simply because the latter cannot use its skills. For the same reason, and for another that the Mongols could take advantage of -- having less need of supplies because they were more hardy than their enemies -- Rome could not overcome Parthia.) They also knew where their enemies were.

This cannot be understated as an advantage. The Huns could appear from nowhere, catching settlements unawares, just like human locusts, but the settlements could not sneak up on the Huns. No one could threaten the Huns' own settlements because they were so distant from the point of action, and those who fought them did not anyway know where they were. The Huns seemed to drop from the skies. When they had lived in places where their homes were more vulnerable, they had been driven out, but in later times, when they seemed rootless, homeless, they were close to invincible (and it was basically only betrayal, at Chalons, that saw them defeated, and then only by an enemy, in Aetius, who had learned to be as flexible and mobile as they were).

Note that the Huns did not create wealth. They were wealthy, and the Mongols became even wealthier, but they did not create anything. They took value from the settled people. Here is history in a nutshell: the ordinary people create value, wealth, whatever we call it, and people who have an information advantage steal it from them.

We often hear that rich people have worked hard to acquire their wealth, and I'm sure they do, but they are not wealthy because they worked hard. If they were, Stakhanov would have been a millionaire and my dad would too. I have often thought about Roman Abramovich, a very wealthy man who has never worked at all that I know of, let alone hard. He made his billions by knowing the right people. That too is an information advantage. He has created nothing. He made his money from the natural wealth of Siberia, and simply sat at the apex of corporations that extracted that wealth. Sure, he would have made decisions, but to be honest, in business most decisions make themselves, and all you have to do to profit from them is be in the right place at the right time.

Being in the right place at the right time is a skill in itself though. Realising which things, or which people, you know can make you money is the key to making money. I mean, I'm a smart and capable person, and given the opportunity, I'd be rich. But I have no information that I can turn into dollars bar a knowledge of how English works, and that just isn't as valuable as knowing an oligarch.

Information advantages shift with time, of course. Mongols today are not rich, and before Genghis Khan they were not rich either. Most horse peoples lived very hard lives before they realised they could just steal wealth from the settled peoples. Most never realised their advantage. Currently, the West has a rapidly eroding information headstart (I guess that is the right term), which has made us rich. Anyone who has read Guns, germs and steel cannot help but be impressed with the power of its thesis. Europe conquered the world because it knew more than the world. The reasons for its information advantage are probably less interesting than the power of the advantage itself, but Diamond shows how it came into being. He stresses, and it should be stressed, that there is no inherent advantage in being a white European. If we had came to be in Africa, and Africans in Europe, we would have seen millions of whites enslaved. Racial supremacy is as foolish a notion as you can sign up to. It's all about what you know, not what colour your skin is.

Not all information is valuable, and judging what is and isn't can be very difficult. But the rich do not on the whole acquire their wealth by being good judges of information, but by being fortunate enough to uncover it or to be born as custodians of it. (That's not to say that you cannot create an information advantage and profit from it: that's precisely what you do when you learn to be a doctor, and what I'm seeking to do by learning how to win at poker.) It's not even a question of skill, but of the right skill. The Zulus were incredibly skilled, among the greatest, if not the greatest, exponents of weapons handling at close quarters. But they were still heavily defeated by the British, because we knew how to make and use guns. You need to think it through carefully to understand that what counted was not how skilful each was, but how applicable that skill was. A Hun with a composite bow could kill the best swordsman their enemies could field without that swordsman even being able to see his features.

What counts here is, in part, perspective. A Roman soldier had a huge advantage over other fighters at close quarters. For centuries, the Roman advantage was in knowing that cohesiveness and discipline could overcome personal skill. Then they met the Huns, whose personal skill crushed them. For Romans, for a millennium, war had consisted of getting close to enemies and then slicing them to ribbons. Suddenly, or fairly suddenly, they were facing an enemy whose chief advantage consisted in knowing that war could also consist of murdering standing targets at long range. The same is true of all the settled peoples that the horse archers destroyed. Each was set up to fight other similar peoples, and none could step outside their war paradigm (or was not skilled enough in other paradigms) to defend themselves well against the horsemen.

Information is not just the key to wealth, nor is it merely the key to human relations. It is the answer to life, the universe and everything. We exist because of an information differential, and all of life is a struggle to obtain and profit from information differentials. What makes life, and its highways and byways, maddeningly hard to understand is the difficulty in knowing which information is most valuable. In principle, each unit of information should have the same value (in the same way that each electron is the same electron), and in the bigger scheme of things, that is so. But down here, on the human level, it is different.

I think a lot about equity, and for whatever reason, I'm a true believer in it. At base, it's because I think we have equal value, and because our lives are so short and fragile, I have never been able to conceptualise them as anything other than deeply precious. I feel strongly that injustice is born in unevenness of information, and I feel that ways to diminish its importance should be emphasised if we believe in equity. I note that Rawls, even if he didn't think in these terms, was able to see that the only way to ensure justice was to remove information from our consideration of what is just. He asked that we should make decisions about justice from beneath a veil of ignorance. I would insist that we cannot be just unless we are willing to forget what we know.

Which is not easy. How can it be easy to give up your advantage over others, when you know that they suffer so greatly from lacking what you have? We are all, or at best nearly all who read this, gainers from a huge information gap between us and them. Understanding that you do not have merit, just luck, is extremely hard.

Okay, I'm drunk and can't continue just now. But I have more to say. Among other things, of course I am saying that the rich do not deserve it but are simply using a temporary information gap, and more importantly for most of us, that education, conceived in a broad sense, is the only hope of the disadvantaged, our only road to acquisition of wealth.

On information

So I was thinking about what I could write about, because I still want to be a novelist, and I believe I have the skills, but what I lack is a story that is engaging enough for me to be confident that others will want to read it. That doesn't mean that I don't have stories that you will want to read. We are talking about a deeper degree of confidence. I'm pretty sure I'd be harder to convince than you are. I don't want to be second best. (I fear that that may have its end in my never writing anything, simply because I conclude that second best is all I'm capable of. And while I'm aware that second best would be pretty good, it's not good enough for me. Without a clear outside incentive -- such as, for instance, making a living -- I've never seen much point in pursuing anything just to be mediocre at it. Which probably explains why I don't pursue anything at all these days, not music, not art, nothing, even though some of the things I could just be no good at I enjoyed doing for their own sake.)

And it struck me -- I realise this is a roundabout way of getting to the point, but it's how I got to it -- that wealth is acquired by those who have an advantage in information, and that has been true throughout history. How did I get there from musing on what I could write? Well, it's simple, really: I realised that because I have a fairly dull life, I feel like I have no information advantage over most readers. What else is a story but something I know and you don't? If I feel that what I know and you don't isn't worth telling, then obviously I don't feel advantaged enough to profit from it.

I came to this conclusion when thinking about the Huns and the other horseborne invaders of Dark Ages Europe. Keegan, in his History of Warfare, is musing on how the Mongols managed to conquer where other similar groups of horsemen did not. He doesn't really come to a conclusion, and I don't know the answer to that question, but thinking about it led me to the realisation that the horse archers of northeast Asia were advantaged in many ways over the settled peoples they pillaged, but above all by their information advantage. What did they know that the settled peoples didn't? Several things. They knew that valour is worthless. They knew that mobility defeats power in warfare. They had a huge advantage in skill (and this should not be undervalued in warfare: the British "thin red line" did not win against the odds just because it had rifles but because it had an enormous tactical advantage over its enemies -- curiously, it succeeded for many of the same reasons as the horse archers: those who specialise in attacking at long range can basically mince those who specialise in war at close order, simply because the latter cannot use its skills. For the same reason, and for another that the Mongols could take advantage of -- having less need of supplies because they were more hardy than their enemies -- Rome could not overcome Parthia.) They also knew where their enemies were.

This cannot be understated as an advantage. The Huns could appear from nowhere, catching settlements unawares, just like human locusts, but the settlements could not sneak up on the Huns. No one could threaten the Huns' own settlements because they were so distant from the point of action, and those who fought them did not anyway know where they were. The Huns seemed to drop from the skies. When they had lived in places where their homes were more vulnerable, they had been driven out, but in later times, when they seemed rootless, homeless, they were close to invincible (and it was basically only betrayal, at Chalons, that saw them defeated, and then only by an enemy, in Aetius, who had learned to be as flexible and mobile as they were).

Note that the Huns did not create wealth. They were wealthy, and the Mongols became even wealthier, but they did not create anything. They took value from the settled people. Here is history in a nutshell: the ordinary people create value, wealth, whatever we call it, and people who have an information advantage steal it from them.

We often hear that rich people have worked hard to acquire their wealth, and I'm sure they do, but they are not wealthy because they worked hard. If they were, Stakhanov would have been a millionaire and my dad would too. I have often thought about Roman Abramovich, a very wealthy man who has never worked at all that I know of, let alone hard. He made his billions by knowing the right people. That too is an information advantage. He has created nothing. He made his money from the natural wealth of Siberia, and simply sat at the apex of corporations that extracted that wealth. Sure, he would have made decisions, but to be honest, in business most decisions make themselves, and all you have to do to profit from them is be in the right place at the right time.

Being in the right place at the right time is a skill in itself though. Realising which things, or which people, you know can make you money is the key to making money. I mean, I'm a smart and capable person, and given the opportunity, I'd be rich. But I have no information that I can turn into dollars bar a knowledge of how English works, and that just isn't as valuable as knowing an oligarch.

Information advantages shift with time, of course. Mongols today are not rich, and before Genghis Khan they were not rich either. Most horse peoples lived very hard lives before they realised they could just steal wealth from the settled peoples. Most never realised their advantage. Currently, the West has a rapidly eroding information headstart (I guess that is the right term), which has made us rich. Anyone who has read Guns, germs and steel cannot help but be impressed with the power of its thesis. Europe conquered the world because it knew more than the world. The reasons for its information advantage are probably less interesting than the power of the advantage itself, but Diamond shows how it came into being. He stresses, and it should be stressed, that there is no inherent advantage in being a white European. If we had came to be in Africa, and Africans in Europe, we would have seen millions of whites enslaved. Racial supremacy is as foolish a notion as you can sign up to. It's all about what you know, not what colour your skin is.

Not all information is valuable, and judging what is and isn't can be very difficult. But the rich do not on the whole acquire their wealth by being good judges of information, but by being fortunate enough to uncover it or to be born as custodians of it. (That's not to say that you cannot create an information advantage and profit from it: that's precisely what you do when you learn to be a doctor, and what I'm seeking to do by learning how to win at poker.) It's not even a question of skill, but of the right skill. The Zulus were incredibly skilled, among the greatest, if not the greatest, exponents of weapons handling at close quarters. But they were still heavily defeated by the British, because we knew how to make and use guns. You need to think it through carefully to understand that what counted was not how skilful each was, but how applicable that skill was. A Hun with a composite bow could kill the best swordsman their enemies could field without that swordsman even being able to see his features.

What counts here is, in part, perspective. A Roman soldier had a huge advantage over other fighters at close quarters. For centuries, the Roman advantage was in knowing that cohesiveness and discipline could overcome personal skill. Then they met the Huns, whose personal skill crushed them. For Romans, for a millennium, war had consisted of getting close to enemies and then slicing them to ribbons. Suddenly, or fairly suddenly, they were facing an enemy whose chief advantage consisted in knowing that war could also consist of murdering standing targets at long range. The same is true of all the settled peoples that the horse archers destroyed. Each was set up to fight other similar peoples, and none could step outside their war paradigm (or was not skilled enough in other paradigms) to defend themselves well against the horsemen.

Information is not just the key to wealth, nor is it merely the key to human relations. It is the answer to life, the universe and everything. We exist because of an information differential, and all of life is a struggle to obtain and profit from information differentials. What makes life, and its highways and byways, maddeningly hard to understand is the difficulty in knowing which information is most valuable. In principle, each unit of information should have the same value (in the same way that each electron is the same electron), and in the bigger scheme of things, that is so. But down here, on the human level, it is different.

I think a lot about equity, and for whatever reason, I'm a true believer in it. At base, it's because I think we have equal value, and because our lives are so short and fragile, I have never been able to conceptualise them as anything other than deeply precious. I feel strongly that injustice is born in unevenness of information, and I feel that ways to diminish its importance should be emphasised if we believe in equity. I note that Rawls, even if he didn't think in these terms, was able to see that the only way to ensure justice was to remove information from our consideration of what is just. He asked that we should make decisions about justice from beneath a veil of ignorance. I would insist that we cannot be just unless we are willing to forget what we know.

Which is not easy. How can it be easy to give up your advantage over others, when you know that they suffer so greatly from lacking what you have? We are all, or at best nearly all who read this, gainers from a huge information gap between us and them. Understanding that you do not have merit, just luck, is extremely hard.

Okay, I'm drunk and can't continue just now. But I have more to say. Among other things, of course I am saying that the rich do not deserve it but are simply using a temporary information gap, and more importantly for most of us, that education, conceived in a broad sense, is the only hope of the disadvantaged, our only road to acquisition of wealth.

Let's be clear. If Malcolm Turnbull was PM, he would be racking up a deficit right now. If the Republicans were in power in the States, they'd be passing a huge stimulus.

Each claims that they would focus on tax cuts, but tax cuts do not work as well as spending. This is a matter of economic fact, not an ideological position, and was quite decently demonstrated by Bush's failed stimulus.

Indeed, if Turnbull or the Repugs were smart, which I'm fully willing to accept they are not, they would be urging bigger stimulus.

Australia has taken the right course. The times call for helicopter money and we are firing up the whirlybirds. Good for Rudd. I hope it works, and Australia avoids the depression that lurks. Of course, if America fucks up, it won't matter what we do, but at least we are showing willing.

Why shoot the rich?

Why do I believe that the poor should rise up in insurrection and murder the rich? Well, it's hard to sum up, but luckily a bank executive did it for me. When told that President Obama intended to cap executive bay to 500K, his reaction was that that "wasn't much money" and it was a disgrace that he should have to consider only being paid it. With no bonus!

But wait. This is one of the guys who has fucked up not only his bank, but our economy, on an enormous scale, so badly that his bank, like most others, is technically bust, and now has to go cap in hand to the people who do not even dream of earning 500K, many of whom not earning it in a decade, some only barely clearing it in their lifetime, to ask them to pay not just for the losses he is responsible for, but ultimately the 500K that he thinks is not enough compensation for being useless (or in fact for being too useful but at the wrong thing).

Mes amis, aux armes! We need to cease to believe in philosophies and ideologies that allow these people to believe that they are entitled to being supported by us. We need change. You feel you are wealthy, some of you, and today you are, but your wealth is largely illusory, and even some of us who are doing well enough are a paycheque from the kerb. And we will never sip champagne in our personal helicopter!

Nor should we. Not one of us should while one starves. No one should think 500K is not much money when some do not have so much as 500c. Any world in which this is not true is one that needs revolution; this is self-evidently true, and the only reason you do not share this belief is that you have been indoctrinated, by an education that stifles critical thinking, media that are owned by billionaires and a society that compounds ignorance by worshipping it. We are still enchained! Those chains are not so apparent, and many of us believe we are free because we have enough to eat, but they exist still. Aux armes, citoyens! Who will be free? Who believes it is the right of all?

Naked capitalism has an excellent post on the Obama bailout. The key understanding you should walk away from this article with is this quote from the recent IMF report into banking crises:

Existing empirical research has shown that providing assistance to banks and their borrowers can be counterproductive, resulting in increased losses to banks, which often abuse forbearance to take unproductive risks at government expense. The typical result of forbearance is a deeper hole in the net worth of banks, crippling tax burdens to finance bank bailouts, and even more severe credit supply contraction and economic decline than would have occurred in the absence of forbearance.

Look what the banks did after they got the first half of TARP, and in the UK when they were bailed out almost to the point of bankrupting the country: they started planning acquisitions and taking on more risk, which allowed them to pay themselves ever bigger bonuses. They just did business as usual.

But business as usual is what broke the financial system. What is almost incredible is that banks should never be unprofitable. They are able to create money! They are also able to borrow funds at extremely low interest rates and then lend it on at rates that can be as much as 15% higher. You'd think you can make good money on those terms. And banks did. But it wasn't enough. Here is one of the fundamental problems with capitalism: it is not geared to providing a service, creating goods or improving our lives; it's all about making profits. So in return for the easy money for their shareholders, while you'd think banks would accept that their role in our social structure demands prudence, they understood their role only to be to find creative ways to gamble.

But let me explain something about gambling, something I understand pretty well. It's usually zero sum. Someone gains and someone else loses. That someone should, of course, be the shareholders and the employees of the banks. This is how capitalism is supposed to work. You provide capital and you hope it is turned into huge profits. But your downside is losing your capital.

Not if you capitalised a bank.

The correct solution, imo, for the financial crisis would be to nationalise the banks, wiping out the shareholders, cramming down creditors where possible, wiping them out too if the banks are beyond rescue, sacking the management en masse and reconstituting the financial system within much more stringent regulatory limits. Banking should be boring and safe. No more helicopters and champagne.

It won't happen. The fear is that we will fall into a deflationary spiral that might tank our system altogether. Are we at "hoard cans" stage? I know it doesn't feel like it (the crisis seems to be happening to someone else while you still have a job and are actually better off because interest rates are so low), but we might be pretty close. Our governments have become hamstrung by factional interests, but my fear is that they actually cannot resolve the crisis at this point, and if they leave it much longer to change our financial system root and branch, we may be so far in the hole that even that will not help at all.

***

Meanwhile, the American "left" is chockers with idiots like this. Same old story. The right fucks the people, whether it's the far right in the Republicans, or the soft right in the Dems, and fellow travellers like this clown admonish the dirty fucking hippies for suggesting that maybe that just isn't working for most of us.

I'll tell you what's fucking "fail", Grand Moff BlueDog. Crippling your bill in the name of bipartisanship while you're aware that the other side is kicking you in the nuts, and believing that next time you need to stimulate the economy, they'll not kick you there even harder. Caving to the Republicans didn't make them more willing to share. It made them keener to fuck you harder. Parting your cheeks and yelling "yes please" are no road to salvation, son; rather, they're a motorway to you're fucked.

Wednesday, February 04, 2009

Why did the corporate elites allow a man whom the right accuse of being a "liberal" and a "progressive" take the White House? Here's why.

Obama is Chicago School tip to toe. He is not in the job to benefit the people. The Chicago School thinks people are just inputs, creating wealth for the rich to syphon into their bank accounts. Yeah, he probably gets a bit weepy when he reads about the poor, but he's certainly not going to be in the business of redistributing much if any income their way, whatever the right says. That's not what he's there for.

Well, this is obvious. Corporations don't pay political donations to buy populist policies. What they want is for the financial system, buckling after a couple of decades of sustained rapine, to be patched up and kept going so that they can loot more value, until finally it is worn out. When that happens, they'll simply find another paradigm. Capitalism has been pretty good, much more efficient than feudalism for instance (although feudalism might well have worked just as well given the information and technical advances of the past three centuries).

Check out the quote from Geithner in that piece.

We have a financial system that is run by private shareholders, managed by private institutions, and we'd like to do our best to preserve that system.

Why? No one asks why. What is the benefit to most of us of continued private ownership of the financial system? I doubt any of those who read this blog and think that capitalism is the bomb could even begin to answer that question. I'll save them the effort. The answer is there is no benefit to us. Geithner is not serving us. He knows who his masters are, and it's not we the people.

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Tracks of my cheers

It's non-negotiable in my house that Damon Albarn is a Total Fucking Genius because his talent for tunes is a rare thing in pop. It doesn't get better than Tender, Albarn's gospel stylee bittersweet love song.

That makes me feel good to hear, I can tell you. In a different vein, but equally uplifting is She will only bring you happiness by Mclusky. Mclusky could easily have been dismissed as a novelty band, had they ever come to notice. Sadly, they didn't, but they have a devoted cult following. Or had, I should say, since they are now defunct.

Curiously, listening to Tender made me think of Jigsaw falling into place by Radiohead. Dunno why. It's about the only decent track on In rainbows. I'm not a huge fan of Radiohead but they have their moments. OK computer was a decent album if you don't mind a band five miles up their arses. Obviously, I have no problem with people up their own butts, since I live a country mile up my own most of the time. I think I like Jigsaw because it sounds like the inside of my head and Thom Yorke hits that place where you almost cannot stand to hear him almost not able to stand it.

I've recently been listening to a lot of Shpongle. I don't know how exactly you'd describe this. I've seen it called Goa trance, but it's much more laidback than that suggests. It's incredibly well produced psychedelic ambient techno, I suppose. It also makes me glad that P. is offline because she would rip me a new one when she realised I was bullshitting when I said flutes can never feature in good music. The proof that they can is right here: Behind closed eyelids.

You ever have a song that you love but you forget how much you love it, so you don't hear it for ages? Rez is one of those. It's one of Underworld's finest moments; it has none of the quasi lad rock than they sometimes indulge in (particularly on their most recent, not very good album), and is pure belting techno. Which is no bad thing IYAM.

Happy memories for me too, but let's not go there; those days are gone now, right?

Those familiar with Underworld's music will recognise that in this video Rez segues into Cowgirl, which is also excellent. The video is vaaaiiirrry nice, particularly if you watch it at 4.20 iykwim.

Sadly, there's no video for What is real by Cabaret Voltaire, another rediscovered beauty, but I found Yashar (several videos of it, actually). This is the John Robie remix. I think I prefer the original on 2x45, but this is the one I first heard. I daresay the Cabs also have a cult following but I've only ever met one person who had even heard of them, let alone liked them. Their career spanned proto-industrial, featuring cutup and awesomely paranoid lyrics, proto-techno, IDM before it was ever called that and whiteboy funk that doesn't suck, if that's not a contradiction in terms.

Now, I know no one has read all the way to the end, so we're safe to put this complete fucking gem here. There are good mashups and bad and this is brilliant. It's Kylie, obv., the single most fuckable Aussie ever, and Can't get Blue Monday out of my head. It's about 15 times better than you think it's going to be, if you can believe that, and you think it's going to be brilliant, because both New Order and the Kylester are ace.

Now you know that once New Order get a mention, I'm going to be wanting to listen to some. They remain far and away my favourite band. Here's the legendary live appearance on Top of the Pops. If I didn't have a million reasons to love them, their insistence on not miming would have done it. They murder it, obv., but it was still one of those wonderful moments when you realise that some people in the biz really do love it like you do.

I couldn't find the original. Youtube has the '88 version but it's an object lesson in how to spoil a song completely.

Right, that's it. Last song is from the soundtrack to the brilliant Slumdog Millionaire, which is a movie in the old style, and is, did I mention, brilliant. Check out O Saya too; it belts.

Actually, fuck it, since we had a Blue Monday mashup and MIA, we should have MIA's Blue Monday mashup, right? Crap video but what can you do?

If you don't go mental for the Pixies drop, well, what can be done with you, hey? Peace now.

Monday, February 02, 2009

yah

I am LingOL at myself because a really good thing about Blogger is that you can say what you want to say, save it for a rainy day, and then post something that is not what you wanted to say but is more like what someone would want to read, so who loses?